The Other Side of the Real World
by mooncycle
Summary: Events surrounding the first coming of the One. Please R


The Other Side of the Real World  
  
Part I  
  
The Year: 2105. The Place: New York City... or so it used to be known. All of is lies in ruin. It has come to be known as the Desert of the Real. I live in a small village under the earth's crust, constructed many years ago by what was left of the humans in New York. After the Great War of Machines, we ran away and found shelter in this cave. Here we live just outside of the other group that has taken over our earth: the Apes. (Author's note from many years later: When I wrote this, Zion was merely another village like mine, with less than 1,000 inhabitants. As this story continues, you'll find out I reside in Zion now and why.)  
I live in the most horrible, dangerous and confusing area of the world. Here we are, a small group of humans from different backgrounds, all living down here since the War. None of us knew each other before the War, except for a few acquaintances from the military that survived. At the time the War began, scientists had been experimenting with apes and monkeys and trying to train them as household servants. Most of those involved were, in fact, A.I. sympathizers and preferred using a more "natural" artificial human. Their plan was more civilized than the treatment of most machines, but still, it was destined to backfire. These Apes had become very smart. A few could even speak at a toddler's level. Most were fluent in sign language, and others could write in basic manuscript. They began to communicate with each other and were starting to become more than the scientists could handle. Some of the apes that hadn't yet developed to that intelligence were released into the wild, namely African jungles and savannahs. Some reports from their local authorities said they'd been known to terrorize tribal villages and loot entire marketplaces. Those are more or less rumors than actual facts.  
The rest of the apes left in captivity continued to be studied, but in more confined laboratories with 24-hour surveillance. Many of the original scientists had left to do different studies. This time, new people were brought in who had little or no previous experience in animal or human psychological study. Their area of expertise was computers, and of course, machines. What happened next is still a controversy, but I'll tell you what I understand.  
One of the leading researchers had brought in a machine assistant known as A49-PLK3. The United States Army, for scouting enemy battlefields and sweeping any enemy soldiers, had used the A4 series of machines. The tests went well, and several units were used in various overseas missions. The remaining prototypes were sold at Army surplus store and flea markets. The scientist, a retired Marine officer and computer technician, bought A49- PLK3 and made a few "improvements".  
The studies went smoothly for several months. The Apes seemed to plateau out and all had come to a shared level of intelligence. A49-PLK3 and the Apes had developed a certain amount of friendship, and discussed often of the world's current politics and situations. The scientists had a field day studying the interactions of the Machine and the Ape. However, by this time, the machine race had founded Zero-One in the Middle East. The end of the world was at hand.  
The war struck hardest on New York City. The United Nations had refused to regard Zero-One as a country, and when the war started, millions of people and machines fled the city. London was next to fall to Machine rule. Then Paris. Then Tokyo. Mexico City. One by one the empires of man fell to the rule of A.I. The remaining leaders of the human race had decided to destroy the sky, and this of course, destroyed animal and plant life. The Apes were protected in the laboratory, and up until the destruction of the sky, they had neutral feelings about the war. Since they were friends with A49-PLK3, they asked him to go to Zero-One for a safe haven. He said he would only go if they would join him. They agreed, and they all left New York and made for the Middle East. The Machines took them in, and the Apes helped the Machines and early Matrix programs in studying the human bodies. Then, a few years later, the Apes decided to go back to the old lab and see what was left. The remaining handful of the Human Resistance in New York had built the shelter I live in not too far from the old lab. The land was in ruins, and at the center of it all, on the beach, there was the Statue of Liberty. She was broken from her original base and now she rested on her torso with the torch pointing toward the black sky. The Apes and Machines don't see what we do when we look at the Statue. When we look at all of the fallen buildings we see "United We Stand" with an American Flag on one side, and the Machines' bar code on the other. Our world is gone. ===============================================================  
  
Part II (From Zion)  
  
The Apes found their old home and then found the surface entrance to our shelter soon after. They had developed a hatred for Man by then, as you've probably already guessed. They entered our cave and found us there, merely trying to survive. We had done nothing wrong. Most of the people were slaughtered, but 10 of us were able to escape, myself included. We found an area not far outside the city where we found a family that survived in an old fallout shelter. They had seen the Apes come. They knew about the Apes. There were few who didn't. Their eldest son had shot a few of them with his rifle, but the Apes didn't stop. They continued on to find the lab. We all discussed how the Apes might survive without a suitable food source, trying not to think about our own food. To this day, we don't know exactly what happened to the Apes. Some say they went to Africa to find the other Apes. Others propose they went to back to Zero-One and have their own community. We really can't be sure.  
There were 16 of us in the fallout shelter, and we knew we needed to find more survivors. By now, the Machines had developed the Matrix in its current form, and they had built a power plant not too far from us. I went with 2 other guys to scope out the place. The sentinels guarded the area heavily, so we only could go so far.  
We hid behind some rubble, approximately 500 yards from the plant. We noticed their waste system, flooded with human bones. Many people plugged in the first Matrix committed suicide because of the perfect world it offered. Mankind doesn't believe in perfection. We guessed the bones had been there awhile. Without the sun, the bones wouldn't have decomposed. We then saw something moving in the pool of waste. A man was trying to swim to the dry land, while trying to avoid the sentinels. He made a daring run from them and eventually he got away. When we sensed it was safe we ran off in his direction to find out who he was.  
We didn't get to far until we found him passed out on the ground, next to a small flower that still lived. The man was skinny and hairless, and he smelled of raw sewage from the waste pit. He had several open holes all over his body from where the Machines had fed off his energy. We immediately took him back to the fallout shelter and we nursed him back to health.  
When he came to, he told us the Matrix was like a copy of what the world had been just a century before. He also said that he was able to make and see things that were not possible in real life. We didn't know what to think of it until he showed us. We took and old computer and used some batteries stored away to bring it back to power. We were able to get some reading off the power plant's broadcast waves. At first it didn't seem like much, just a bunch of green symbols going up and down. But after looking at it for a while, we saw people going back and forth. We saw children running and playing. Cars and drivers. Animals and trainers. This was the world we had known! Not much longer did we get to see anything. The programs traced the feed and it went blank. We now knew the human race was trapped in this dream world.  
How he had exited out was a mystery to us, and even to him. He last memory was meditating in his room, with his computer on, and then he woke up in a pool of pink goop. He said he had a vision of a place deep underground where mankind still thrived. He didn't know where it was, but he felt drawn to it somehow. He asked us to take him there. Acting on faith, we all agreed. We packed up what we needed, and began our journey. We went toward the city, and found an old subway station and went in it. The wall on one side was broken down, revealing a pass that went deep into the earth. We followed it, and sure enough, it led us to the place he spoke of. They called this place Zion, the Promised Land.  
The people there took us in and we were able to start a way to free minds from the Matrix. We had only freed a few until the Machines started to figure out what we were doing and started using the Agents to control Matrix traffic. Many of the minds we freed were computer hackers or programmers. They have proved to be an important asset in our resistance. However, we still are fighting in the real world. I have gone on a couple surface missions, only to return with serious injury and friends dead. We went to the surface for supplies and historical artifacts, but this was, of course, EXTREMELY dangerous. That is why we only have bits and pieces of information. We lost a lot of good men and women on these missions, so eventually, the Council banned them. They now only let people leave Zion if they are trained to run a ship. These ships are usually hovercrafts, a technology only in infant stages when I began writing this. Sometimes, they allow specialized ground vehicles to go out. They aren't used for Matrix missions, but rather Machine combat. Only a very select few get to use these. One thing we also have is exoskeletons which where designed after the U.S. Military's model used in the Great War of Machines. The regular infantry uses these. They are, however, dangerous in the fact that their bodies are exposed with little armor, leaving a Machine the possibility of ripping them out. Ouch. I now live in Zion working on the ships and various machines. I also help write programs for the ships' constructs. I've never been inside the Matrix myself. I was born naturally, so I can't be plugged in. I do sometimes wish I could go in with them, and learn the things they do. I want to free my friends and family that might be there.... if they're still alive. But one man is dead now. The man that brought us here. He died and we now wait. We wait for a prophecy to be fulfilled. I hope he will return. 


End file.
